


How To Find Your Way Home

by omelet



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Destiny, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 02:06:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10233266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omelet/pseuds/omelet
Summary: They were reborn into new lives, given a new purpose and path. Sometimes the unknown is not what lies ahead, but what was left behind.(a Destiny AU)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another old ficlet, a Destiny (the game) AU. This one is a little reference-heavy so I apologize if it's hard to read. Where are my Destiny/Hockey RPF people at
> 
> Unbeta'd.

The first time they hear the echo of the warmind Rasputin in Old Russia, Geno dies.

“A Dreg, G? Really?” Sidney teases as Geno re-materializes on the spot where he fell. Geno shakes out his limbs, like he usually does after a revive, but he’s strangely quiet; even his Ghost hovers anxiously in the air, optic light flashing once, twice, before fading back to Geno’s side. Sidney can hear Geno’s breath through the filter of his helmet, stilted, short breaths, like half-formed words failing to escape. “Hey, you alright? Should we call in backup?”

Geno shakes his head. “Everything fine,” he says, checking his rifle. “Let’s go.”

Sidney has known Geno long enough to know when he lies, but he lets it go. He follows him down to the base of the warmind, soft mesh of music playing amid the firefights with the Fallen. Geno dies again and again, and Sidney revives him, every time.

 

-

 

“I understood him.”

Sidney looks at Geno. “Who?”

“Rasputin,” Geno says. “Not every word, just some, but I -,” he shakes his head. “It sound familiar.”

Most Guardians know the universal language, their proficiency depending on when they were born, when they died. The scholars say that most of the old Earth languages died out during the Golden Age, preserved in relics, in the archives still being dug up from the ruins of the old world and in the accents of every Guardian. It’s rare to ever hear one spoken.

Sidney looks at Geno. He can’t imagine what Geno must be feeling. Geno’s always seemed so much smaller out of his armor, but he’s never looked this vulnerable.

Geno curls his hand around the edges of the cloth tied around his waist, his mark. It’s a little tattered, singed in some parts, but the colors are still vibrant, the stark red standing out against the bright blue, the double-headed eagle like real gold stitched to pure white cloth.

Sidney remembers the day Geno took it to the outfitter to have it restored. She had told him it was the remnant of an old world flag, that she could fashion it into a mark for him, if he wanted. 

He remembers watching Geno tie it around his waist, the way his lips turned up at the corner. Like it felt right.

 

-

 

They both fit the Titan image in their own ways; Sidney admits that he can be stubborn and Geno has a penchant for punching things, but Fleury likes to say that Geno should have been a Warlock and Sidney a Hunter. Geno is curious, always poking around, climbing up anything that looks vaguely climbable, jumping down into almost every dark pit he comes across, scrutinizing odd runes with nothing but Ghost light. Sidney’s fast, sharp-eyed, more suited for scout work, more used to working alone before he met Flower, met Geno. Maybe it’s why they’ve never needed a third on their fireteam.

“Geno.”

“Sid.” Geno only spares him a glance before turning back. “How you keep finding me?”

“As long as you’re still out here for me to find, I’ll find you,” Sidney answers, walking deeper into the now empty base, where Geno stands in the middle of the room, where they had destroyed the Fallen shank that was threatening Rasputin. He doesn’t ask Geno what he’s doing here, already knows the answer. “You know standing here isn’t going to make him talk.”

Geno makes a vague noise that sounds like agreement. “Have to talk some time.”

“He’s a malfunctioning warmind who survived the Darkness,” Sidney points out. “I don’t think your intimidation tactics will really work here.”

Geno huffs. “Encryption too hard for Ghost to crack. Rasputin give us access before.”

“Yeah, when he was dying,” Sidney replies wryly. Then he adds, “The Vanguard locked up the Seraphim Vault so you can’t try to blow that up either.”

Sidney drags Geno back up to the surface before he starts to get any ideas.

 

-

 

The Traveler gave them the Light, but it didn’t teach them how to cope.

Geno starts disappearing for days at a time. Even when someone manages to rope him into a mission, into training in the Crucible, his mind is always elsewhere. He’s almost always elsewhere, too.

It’s easy enough, gaining access to flight logs, tracking Geno to the Ishtar Archives, the old information caches in Clovis Bray, the handful of outposts left on the Moon. Rasputin has spread his influence across the system and Geno is as determined to follow the web to its center as Sidney is to follow Geno wherever he goes and bring him back. “My very own Guardian,” Geno always likes to joke when Sidney finds him and Sidney always rolls his eyes at him before dragging his half-dead ass out of whatever trouble he’s found himself in.

The others don’t know why Geno does this. Remembering something long forgotten, rediscovering the past, it’s different to realize that the broken place where you have tread hundreds of times might have once been your home. They forget that even Praedyth just wanted to be remembered.

Sidney knows they all had homes on Earth once, all have pasts that they no longer know, all abandoned to follow the path the Traveler set for them. There are Guardians who have strayed, of course, but Sidney will not allow Geno to be one of them.

When Geno goes on too long with his search, Sidney makes him stay in his quarters, makes him promise that he’ll sleep at least until first light. He helps Geno out of his armor, which his Ghost whisks away to have repaired, and sits him down on the edge of his bed, checking him over for any severe injuries.

“Everyone’s starting to wonder about you,” Sidney tells him. “Zavala asked Gonchar about you. Then Gonchar asked me.”

Geno looks up at him. “What you say?”

The Vanguard teaches you to put nothing above the Traveler, above the war, but Sidney thinks it’s stupid to consider it a betrayal. “I tell them you’re busy with patrols.”

It takes a moment for it to dawn on Geno. “Then, the missions -”

“Cayde and Ikora both vouched for Letang and Dupuis,” Sidney says. “They’ve been running missions with me.”

The furrow in Geno’s brow doesn’t go away. “Sorry,” he murmurs, looking away. “Should be there -”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sidney says, quirking a grin at him. They’re quiet for a while before he pats Geno’s thigh as he moves to stand. “You get some rest. I’ll be -”

Geno catches his wrist. Sidney looks at him, but Geno still doesn’t look back.

“I just -,” Geno starts, his voice faltering. “I need -”

They’ve grown up together long enough in this new life to understand each other. Sidney kneels back down in front of him slowly, touches Geno’s cheek. “I know.” He doesn’t tell Geno he’s crazy, doesn’t tell him that he’s chasing something long lost. He doesn’t tell him that it scares him every time Geno leaves, haunted by the thought that one day he might not be able to find him, the thought that one day somehow he’ll go somewhere where Sidney won't be able to follow. Maybe Geno already knows. “I miss you,” he says, because it’s all he can say, before he kisses Geno, softly, because it’s only with him when he can ever be soft, and Geno falls against him, because this is the only place he can ever fall.

He understands that there are some things that you can’t let go of. He just wishes that for Geno, it could be him.

 

-

 

For the first time in months, Geno is the one to find him.

“You know you used to sleep in,” Sidney says into the cold morning air, sitting on an overlook high above Old Russia as the sun rises on the horizon. “I’m not used to see you up at this hour awake or alive.”

Geno chuckles behind him, the frozen dew crunching under his boots as he walks closer. “True. Usually sleeping or dead.”

“So where are you going today?” Sidney asks as Geno sits beside him, removing his helmet with a sigh and setting it next to Sidney’s. 

Geno grins. “Maybe Dreadnaught.”

Sidney stares at him. “You think Oryx has your family tree?”

Geno laughs again, a real laugh, one Sidney hasn’t heard in a long time. “No, I ah, I think I’m going to stay here.”

The flood of relief is so sudden and shocking, he almost doesn’t trust it. “What?”

“Think I’m done,” Geno says with another sigh. “Think I’m find what I’m looking for.”

Sidney shifts, still reeling a little in his head. He had been prepared to go into another dark tunnel filled with enemies trying to kill him and Geno and now he’s a bit at a loss. His fingers taps against the trigger of his gun before he finally holsters it. “Oh,” is all he manages. It feels anticlimactic.

“I thought it was important to me,” Geno says, breaking the silence. “Even after so long, I’m still remember old life, so I thought was important.”

Geno still wears the same mark, the colors of his old country around his waist. “It is,” Sidney says. It crosses every Guardian’s mind at some point, their life before the Traveler, before the Darkness. Most eventually follow the path set before them, but Geno has never been one for blind obedience.

“Maybe,” Geno allows. “But not as important as what I have now.”

Sidney nods absently. “That’s good to hear.”

Geno looks down and away, falling silent for a while. “It’s funny.” Sidney looks at him questioningly. “No matter where I go, you always find me. And every time, I’m think, ‘oh, this must be what it’s like’,” Geno meets his gaze. “To come home.”

Sidney stares at him, wide-eyed. Geno smiles.

“Sorry it take me so long,” he says. “Know I’m home now.”

Sidney smiles back. “So am I.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
